“You would mourn when you needed to mourn, and celebrate when you needed to celebrate. To mourn when the occasion called for celebration is just folly.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror.

A month later, Reinhardt joined many others as they celebrated Lars and Meryl’s marriage – which took place earlier in the same day – in one of Bærengant’s more expensive eateries.

The gathering was a relatively small and private one, with only the unit leaders and other officers from the Company, representatives from the support staff and dependents, as well as what few old comrades Lars and Meryl had left amongst the company, fellow youths who had followed Lars back when he joined the Company in Zephirous over a decade ago.

Back when they first joined the Company, there were twenty of those youths. At the present day, however, only eight – including Meryl – remained. The rest had either passed away, received a crippling injury and took up a support position, or retired from the mercenary business. All of them that remained had proven themselves many times over in the past decade, and had formed a strong bond with the other mercenaries in the process.

Most of them had also found spouses amongst their fellow mercenaries or out of the support staff and dependents, which further tied them to the Company. In fact, Lars and Meryl were the last two bachelors of the group, so it was with great joy that they celebrated the union between the two. It was something the women amongst the group considered to be long overdue, thanks to Lars’ general obliviousness to romance in general and Meryl’s own lack of courage and confidence to initiate things.

While it was not a large gathering, it was a feisty one, as Reinhardt booked a floor of the establishment – not an uncommon practice for large celebrations – for their own use. Good food and high-quality alcohol were brought out in large quantities, as the mercenaries celebrated and toasted to the new couple’s future life.

Near the end of the celebration, they even received an unexpected guest of honor, when Duke Harscape himself paid a visit and offered his well wishes to the couple. Apparently the old Duke had just returned from a patrol around his territory and caught wind of the celebrations on his way towards his manor. He even playfully scolded Reinhardt for not having sent him an invitation.

It was a rare opportunity for the mercenaries to relax and celebrate to their heart’s content, so they did precisely that. The party went on well past the midnight hour, with many of the drunken revelers staying the night at a nearby inn, while some of them had to be carried out as they were too drunk to walk on their own.

The celebration also served to mark Meryl retirement from the mercenary life.

While she had fought as part of Lars’ unit over the past decade, she also often served as his assistant when he was working on the logistical issues the company faced. After their marriage, she made her retirement official, as she would focus on logistics as part of the support staff instead, with the intent of replacing Lars as the head of logistics to lighten his burden after she learned enough.

That also placed her at a safer position, as she planned to build a family with him, rather than continue to risk her life on the battlefield. Reinhardt approved of her choice, as he had also felt that Lars might have been overworked, given how he not only served as a tactician and unit commander, but was also the one responsible for the Company’s logistics.

Meryl becoming his assistant and eventually taking over the logistical duties would help reduce that workload.

Shortly after the marriage, the Company moved out from Bærengant, having finished their recruitment drive there, and headed further northwards. With the current turmoil in the former territory of the Clangeddin Empire, the region was particularly rife with lucrative offers for mercenaries like them. As was common, the best offers were most commonly found in regions nearer the turmoil.

Bærengant was no longer the northern border of Knallzog, as Zephirous had taken over that distinction in the past decade. Reinhardt and the Free Lances was headed to the city the dwarves took from the Holy Kingdom a decade ago for their next destination. There they planned to do a final recruitment drive while they perused the various offers from the former Empire’s territory nearby.

Of course, he also had more personal motives to head there, as he wished to pay a visit to his grandmother-in-law as well. It also allowed Lars and Meryl to visit their birthplace after nearly a decade, as the last time they visited Zephirous was when Erycea was six. Besides those motives, Reinhardt also had no small amount of curiosity in seeing how far the dwarves of Knallzog had developed the city in the past decade.

There was already plenty of construction work going on the last time they paid a visit, most of which focused on building an underground layer beneath the city where a second city would be built. The city’s existing underground infrastructure like the sewers were moved further below – a feat that was made easier by the efforts of hundreds of earth mages skilled in construction – while the resultant underground cavern was reinforced to support the city above without a hitch.

That had been a decade ago, so for all Reinhardt knew, the underground city might have finished its construction by now. Since Elfriede exchanged letters – she asked someone to read them for her as well as writing the replies, of course – regularly with her grandmother, he knew that Varsha still served as the Governess of Zephirous, serving her third term in the position.

It was something that would likely make his plans go more smoothly, as it meant that he would not need to deal with a new and unfamiliar person in charge to get permits for the recruitment drive. If the city had been developed further, that also meant it was more likely for the mercenary’s guild there to have received the most up to date requests and offers, something further helped by their proximity to the former Empire territory.